Niche Frames

Niche Frames are a really friendly family run business, doing printing, framing and mounting. They work with many local artists, and are helpful and patient even if you have a million questions to ask about your print job!
They are one of the few printers that I’ve found that do giclee printing, which is a method of printing to get your image as similar to your original as possible. Prices are average, but the service you get here is really good, as you are well informed of the entire process and made to feel at ease about your print job! Personally I have worked with printers that just don’t explain enough and seem to not want to talk to you about any details, which always leaves my stomach fluttery and unsettled — definitely not the case with Niche.
Even if you have no printing that you need doing, they sell a huge range of independant artist’s work, be it cards, or canvasses. A good browse around for something more individual and most probably, quite limited edition!

Niche, situated on Stokes Croft, is so much more than your average framing shop.
Aside from the various frames and mounts on offer, there is a huge range of cards available for sale, by local and national artists. These cards range from birthday cards to blank cards and are far better quality and more unique than the kind you’d get from Clinton Cards.
On the two occasions that I’ve used Niche I found the owner to be friendly and helpful — even refusing to let me pay for a couple of metres of picture string which I would have had to fork out for in a hardware store.
When helping my boyfriend and I choose a suitable frame for a large graffiti print the girl behind the counter advised us on everything from the colour of the mount board to the type of wood for the frame. She used her knowledge of local graffiti artists that come to Niche to frame their work to ensure that our print was well protected and the owner even offered tips on how to carry the finished framed art home when it was snowing, to minimise the impact if we slipped up. Despite the price it was worth every penny and the result is a piece of art that has been enhanced by the choice of mount and frame.

This is a family run business in Stokes Croft, specialising in framing just about anything. The staff are incredibly friendly and accommodating. It’s a really good place to go if you have a special print or photograph that you want to hang on your wall. However, the best thing about this place, in my opinion, is the gallery of local artists’ work (both budding and established). You can find some fantastic pieces here, so if you’re on the look out for something to fill that blank space on your wall, this is the perfect place to find something really unique.

I found this place because they did a service which is called blockmounting. This is to stick a poster to a piece of wood so it forms a block rather than being in a frame. It is a very good way to smarten up your favourite gig and film posters when you move from being in student digs to having a grown-​up home. We’ve had a bunch of fliers done from our old raving days which can now just stand on a mantlepiece right up to some A0 film posters.
Since then I have gone to them to frame everything we get in of any value that I don’t want to stick into a generic frame. Every time they have spent a good 15 minutes looking with me at different frames and mounts to make the picture have the strongest impact. My favourite to date was a very subtly coloured litho but of a dark subject matter. We ended up with two mounts — one red to bring out the subject matter (!) and one plain grey to not swamp the picture. It was the most interesting process to get to that stage where we could look at that and realise that was the way to go.
Anyway, you look at your options, they won’t push you over budget, and then you let them have it for maybe a week or more if they are busy (and they do get very busy, popular with local artists!). You then pick it up and marvel at how good it looks.
Prices vary of course. I could guestimate that an A0 poster for deepset blockmounting is £70, to frame an A2 piece of art in a nice frame and mount is about £50, to frame an A4 piece nicely is about £20−30. It really does make a difference.
The people who run and work the shop are lovely, very helpful and not snobbish about anything you bring in and the level (or lack of) understanding you have about framing.
The shop also has a great selection of cards, slightly haphazardly arranged against one wall. There are also art prints for sale and a handy noticeboard for artists just inside the door.

I went here to get a weirdly sized picture framed and they were very helpful. Although framing something professionally is always going to cost you, I don’t think they ripped me off.
The selection of frames, all layered up on the walls, is like a work of art in itself, and they’ve got a few prints and paintings for sale.
The best are their prints of vintage classic book covers, the perfect gift for a literary fan.
Picture this, just on Stokes Croft, a paint-​spattered sign and a whole lot of helpful framing advice. You certainly won’t get that in an unspecified Swedish flat-​packed superstore!